Various communication systems exist today to allow electronic devices such as computers to communicate and exchange data and other types of information such as voice and multimedia communications (e.g., video, sound, data) over local and distributed networks. Various wireless communication systems, such as Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) also allow mobile computers to communicate with each other and other computers connected to Wide Area Networks (WAN) such as Internet. Interactive multimedia communications transferred across wireless communication systems require high bandwidth due to the data rates and payload size. For example, real-time multimedia videoconferencing sessions over a wide-area wireless Internet connection requires high data throughput of large payloads, and therefore, the wireless network requires high bandwidth.
Furthermore, in multimedia streaming data is transferred in a stream of packets that are interpreted as they arrive for “just-in-time” delivery of multimedia information. In such multimedia streaming applications WLANs offer several challenges. In a wireless network channel, dynamic variation in the channel conditions due to noise, interference, and path loss effects impact data throughput and packet loss, and hence affects the overall performance of the network. Dynamic changes in the number of users in the network each with varying data rate requirements also result in varying degrees of contention and collision in the network and may impact the amount of bandwidth available per user or per packet flow.
Data throughput reduction and packet loss due to poor channel or link conditions may require that wireless communication devices connected to wireless communications systems attempt packet retransmissions at the data link layer, i.e., medium access control (MAC) layer in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol stack. Wireless communication systems also may allow link adaptation and a choice of different modulation and coding schemes at the data link (MAC) layer or at the physical (PHY) layer that may be used for data transmission over the wireless medium. In a wireless communication system, multimedia applications may include prioritized packets. For example, video packet streams transferred over the wireless communication system include some packets that may be of higher priority than other packets. Transmission of prioritized video packets may cause transmission delays in the wireless network. In addition, any action taken by the network to process a given packet will almost always depend on the transport protocol being used. For example, the wireless network will treat transmission of packets using the Real Time Protocol (RTP) over UDP transport protocol differently from transmissions over TCP, for example. Furthermore, there may be a need to provide information regarding aborted packet further transmission attempts at the MAC/PHY layer to upper layers in the protocol stack. In addition, there may be a need to monitor and develop trends of multiple packet retransmission attempts over the wireless communications system and provide intelligent processing operations in the protocol stack may to address these inter-related functionalities. Accordingly, there is a need for techniques to improve such operations, to improve performance in wireless communication devices, and to increase overall wireless communication system performance.